


Meet Cute (or, The Beatdown)

by JacarandaBanyan



Series: Itachi is a Terrible Pacifist [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Hospitals, I never see Itachi's illness handled in modern aus so here it is, Itachi is a hypocrite, M/M, Meet-Cute, Modern AU, Non-Graphic Violence, but in an entertaining way, discussion of illness/hospital stays, some blood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-22 01:01:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30030627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JacarandaBanyan/pseuds/JacarandaBanyan
Summary: Itachi is a pacifist. He's just not very good at it.Or;Itachi starts a fight in the hospital parking lot, gets a crush, and fails to explain to his little brother why violence is not the answer.
Relationships: Hoshigaki Kisame/Uchiha Itachi
Series: Itachi is a Terrible Pacifist [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2209173
Comments: 10
Kudos: 41





	Meet Cute (or, The Beatdown)

**Author's Note:**

> For Trope March Madness.  
> Prompt: Meet Cute

Itachi’s eyelids felt as heavy as stone, but he refused to let them slip closed. His doctors had warned him that the medication would make him sleepy, but he couldn’t fall asleep until visiting hours were over and the nurse came to make his little brother say goodbye. 

“And then Naruto rigged up this absolute Rube Goldberg device that made a bucket of paint fall on anyone who got too close to our desk group so they had to stay at least five feet away and couldn’t bother us. But the art teacher walked by and set it off so we had to stay after class and clean it up.” Sasuke pouted. It looked disgustingly adorable on his chubby little cheeks. “But Naruto was surprisingly good at cleaning up paint, so it didn’t take as long as I thought it would. We’re going down to the pond tomorrow afternoon.”

“I thought you two were ‘rivals forever’ and ‘never going to make up’ just yesterday,” Itachi laughed. 

Sasuke rolled his eyes. 

“That was  _ before _ he told me he could help me find some garter snakes at the pond. He says he goes there all the time to catch frogs, and that he sees snakes all the time.”

Suddenly, Sasuke brightened up and looked at Itachi with a big smile and hopeful eyes. 

“Hey, Itachi, you could come with us! It’s not that far from school, and Naruto said it’s an easy walk, so you won’t get winded. And Naruto says he’s seen all kinds of birds around the pond, so you could just sit against a tree and birdwatch while Naruto and I wade in the pond. You won’t have to get dirty, and you could bring that your book with all the pretty bird pictures in it-”

Itachi smiled sadly and shook his head. 

“I’m sorry Sasuke. I probably won’t be out of the hospital by tomorrow afternoon. Some other time, okay?”

Sasuke’s smile melted off his face.

“But Mom said you get to come home instead of sleeping at the hospital!”

“You’re right, Sasuke. I do get to go home, just not tonight. I have to have one more surgery tomorrow, and I won’t be able to go home until almost dinner time.”

Sasuke pouted, but accepted Itachi’s delayed return home with resignation. 

“So if you haven’t had your surgery yet, what were you doing here all day?”

“Well, I had a couple of tests done, and some of them take quite a while to do.” He didn’t mention that these tests were simultaneously easier and more worrying than the ones he had had to do when he was first hospitalized. His cute little brother didn’t need to know how much it hurt to cough deeper and harder until he hacked up some fluid for them to analyze, only for it to finally come up with streaks of bright red blood. He doesn’t mention the x-rays of his chest that showed worrying grey patches where there shouldn’t be any. “I have a new suitemate. She’s in another room right now with some friends of hers that came to visit her, but she’s about my age. She’s on the high school fencing team. She’s got long red hair like Naruto’s mom’s, but darker.”

“I saw her when Mom and I came in!” Sasuke gasped. “Her arm was all bandaged up, so I thought she just got hurt. Is she actually sick like you?”

“She’s both. She originally came in for an injury, but when the doctors gave her an x-ray they found a bunch of stuff in her lungs that shouldn’t be there.”

“I heard she was here because she duct taped a taser to a sword and tried to fight the coach with it.” 

The look in Sasuke’s eyes when he said this was a little too close to awe for Itachi’s comfort. 

“And how did you hear about that,  _ hmm?” _ he asked. “She’s too old to be anywhere near your grade, and she was just injured today.”

“Naruto heard about it from one of his friends,” Sasuke said. “The one who transferred last year- Omoi. Omoi’s on the middle school fencing team, and they sometimes go watch the older teams fight. They went to see the college team play today, and he said that girl got into a huge blow-up fight with the coach in front of everyone, and then she just attacked him with her taser swords! He said the taser made a weird sound where it was taped to the blades, like a lightsaber!  _ And _ he said she did this cool kick-flip thing-”

“Sasuke,” Itachi interrupted. “What you’re describing to me is not  _ cool, _ it’s worryingly violent. She could have seriously hurt someone besides herself over a disagreement.”

Sasuke did not look convinced. 

“Sasuke, I know it can seem cool or gratifying in the moment to resort to violence. But such feelings are fleeting. The impact of that violence, however, lasts far longer, and its negative impacts spread farther than you might think. Besides, if you use violence to solve your problems, all you’ve proved is that you are more hostile than your opponent. You have not proved that your view is the correct or more effective one.”

His little brother pouted, but before he could respond the notice came over the intercom announcing the end of visiting hours. 

Sasuke glared at the intercom, then hopped off the bed and waved goodbye. 

“See you tomorrow, Itachi.”

“See you tomorrow, Sasuke.”

As soon as Sasuke was gone, the crushing loneliness descended. Time seemed to turn to a thick glue, trapping him like a bug in amber. 

He wasn’t sure what it was about staring at hospital walls that brought the low-grade loneliness that pervaded his life to the forefront of his mind. It had gotten worse since Shisui had left for his study abroad program, but it had been there even before then. Itachi didn’t have many close friends or confidants- his parents didn’t approve of him wasting time on team sports or clubs that weren’t strictly academic, and he found difficulty relating to his peers in high school. College hadn’t lead to more friends so far either.

He felt bad about envying Sasuke his friend group, and made sure never to let Sasuke know that he felt anything but incandescent happiness that Sasuke had people who cared about him.

It didn’t matter, anyway. Being stuck in the hospital was just so soul-sucking that it made him dwell on things that needn’t be dwelt on. 

* * *

A few minutes later, Itachi watched Sasuke trudge back to the car with their mother through his bedside window. When the two of them reached the car, Sasuke paused and looked back at the hospital. His face scrunched up as he slowly looked through each window on the ground floor until he found Itachi’s.

Itachi smiled and waved. Sasuke waved back. 

At that very moment, the enormous truck parked next to their car roared to life and began to pull out into the parking lot. As it did, the back corner clipped Sasuke in the back, sending him stumbling forward onto his hands and knees. 

Itachi saw red.  _ That punk hit Sasuke with his truck. _

He wasn’t about to let that stand.

Experience told him that the windows would be unlocked, but the screen was still in the way. No matter- if they were anything like the screens at his house, they would pop right out. He blindly groped down the length of his nasal cannula chord to the portable oxygen concentrator it was connected to. The second his fingers found the handle, he hefted it and swung it at the screen as hard as he could. It popped out, leaving an enormous hole for him to step through. He swung the oxygen machine’s straps over his shoulder like a backpack and grabbed his IV stand, and took off across the parking lot. 

The truck hadn’t made it very far- a couple of cars had pulled out ahead of it, and a line was forming at the parking lot exit. Good. Whatever idiot had hurt his precious little brother wouldn’t be able to escape his wrath. 

His hospital gown crinkled noisily as he ran, and the grippy socks they’d given him when he checked in yesterday squeaked against the asphalt. Behind him he thought he heard someone shouting after him. He ignored them. People who weren’t Sasuke could be upset at him later, after he’d taught that truck driver a lesson.

In seconds he had reached the driver’s side door. He balled his fists up and banged on the window as the shocked driver brought the truck to a shuddering stop. 

The window rolled down and a lightly tanned man with a bandaged-up face and cow print sweatpants leaned out. 

“Jesus Christ, what is your problem-”

With a shriek of rage, Itachi reached in, undid the man’s seatbelt, grabbed him by the collar of his shirt, and dragged him out of the vehicle. 

“What the fuck?” Shouted the man in the passenger seat, but Itachi ignored him. 

“You  _ hit _ my little brother,” he snarled. “You didn’t even stop to check if he was alright.”

He lifted his IV pole like a bow staff and swung it at the man. It caught him in the stomach, and he doubled over. 

“I didn’t see anybody in the rearview mirror!” 

“Yeah, he’s still a little kid! If your rearview mirrors were properly positioned, you would have had no problem seeing him,” Itachi hissed as he continued beating him with his IV pole. 

The driver scrabbled for the handle to the truck door in-between Itachi’s strikes. After a few false starts, he managed to pull it open. He fumbled for a second, then pulled a fencing sword out from behind the seat. 

He whirled on Itachi and grinned triumphantly. 

Itachi’s eyes narrowed. It this guy thought Itachi could be dissuaded from his goal, then he was sorely mistaken. 

Sword met IV pole with a dull metallic clank. Truck Guy parried Itachi’s next blow, but Itachi’s mind was already on the next strike. He made use of the IV pole’s length to make it past Truck Guy’s defenses, and held his hands spaced far apart, bracing the pole so that the collapsible function wouldn’t accidentally trigger during the fight.

The blunted fencing sword slammed into his forearms, but Itachi ignored the aching pain of the hits. The bruises he could feel blooming on the site of each blow were a problem for future Itachi. When the sword struck the area between his hands, he ignored the way the blow seemed to rattle his bones and twisted the pole to pivot under and against the blade and score another hit. 

While Truck Guy was clearly the more skilled fighter, he was still no match for Itachi’s single-minded focus. 

Triumph quickly faded to fear as his opponent realized that Itachi wasn’t going to back down. 

At some point Truck Guy’s sword got tangled in Itachi’s nasal cannula cord and pulled it off his face. Truck guy froze, wild eyes jerking up to Itachi’s face like he thought Itachi might asphyxiate and pass out on the spot. 

Itachi barely noticed. All he knew was that Truck Guy’s momentarily lapse in his defense allowed Itachi to land a solid hit to his face. 

The jerky movements of the fight nearly ripped his IV out, but by some miracle it stayed mostly attached. It did, however, start bleeding sluggishly after a particularly enthusiastic jab of Itachi’s pole.

A couple onlookers had arrived, but they didn’t seem that intent on breaking up the fight. Instead, one of them whistled when Itachi went after Truck Guy’s sword hand with the thick metal base of the pole, forcing him to loosen his grip on his sword’s handle. One of them appeared to be filming the fight. Behind them, whoever had been in the passenger seat of the car had apparently parked it and turned off the engine. 

A second later Itachi had the guy on the ground again, this time with the heavy base of the pole pressed against his neck. 

“You will fix your mirrors,” He growled. Truck guy nodded slowly. “You will drive more carefully. And you will apologize to my brother.”

Truck Guy nodded slowly. 

“You’re insane, you know that right?”

“I’ll take that as a ‘yes, I will fix my mirrors.’”

“Yeah, sure, whatever.” Truck Guy looked past Itachi to glare at the small circle of onlookers. “And fuck you all very much for standing there laughing. Haku wouldn’t do this to me.”

“As if you wouldn’t be even more pissed if one of us horned in on your fight,” replied an onlooker with a shock of shoulder-length white hair. In his hand he held out a cell phone, obviously recording the fight. “Besides, I think that’s my kid brother’s friend’s brother. I heard he’s been on death’s door like, three times in the past year, and he honestly looks like it. I couldn’t have asked for more video-worthy content if I tried.”

That caught Itachi’s attention. 

“You know Sasuke?”

White Haired Guy shrugged. “Does Sasuke know Suigetsu?”

Itachi cast his mind back over Sasuke’s ramblings about his day. 

“Is Suigetsu fond of using his waterbottle as a projectile weapon?”

“Yeah, that’s him!” White Hair Guy smiled. “I’m Mangetsu, and my dorky friend here who can’t keep his eyes off you is Kisame. It’s nice to meet you!”

The tall boy standing at Mangetsu’s side blushed and shoved Mangetsu’s shoulder. 

Itachi blinked, then tilted his face up so he could meet Kisame’s eyes. They were clear and focused in a way that made Itachi want to offer him a fight of his very own, just for the pleasure of facing off against them. 

“Nice to meet you, Itachi,” the boy said with an inclined head. His dyed-blue hair was slicked up in peak reminiscent of a shark fin. “My name is Kisame Hoshigaki. If you don’t mind my asking, where did you learn to parry like that? It’s a rare day that Zabuza meets an opponent he can’t out-maneuver.”

On anyone else, that hair and that polite little bow would have looked ridiculous together. On Kisame, it just looked cool. 

“I hate to disappoint you,” Itachi said, “but I actually don’t know anything about swordplay. I simply let my anger get the best of me.”

It was true. As the hot haze of anger faded, embarrassment settled heavily in his stomach. The chilly bite of the breeze lightly fluttering his hospital gown belatedly registered, sending shivers rocking his frame. Behind him, the blaring alarm which had previously sounded so far away took on a new immediacy. A short ways away he saw his mom standing with Sasuke. She caught his eye and gave him a disapproving glare that said more than a hundred lectures ever would. 

Kisame, on the other hand, looked delighted with Itachi’s temporary lapse in judgement. 

“All the more impressive. No proper sword, no training- that passionate resolve was all you needed.”

A beat of silence passed, and then Kisame reached out towards Itachi’s chest and delicately grabbed his dangling cannula by the wire. Itachi’s eyes immediately snapped down to the other boy’s arms. Firm, well-defined muscles shifted under the surface of his skin like shadows beneath a calm lake surface, and well-defined veins ran like raindrop tracks down the length of his forearm. For a second, Itachi found himself mesmerized.

A sudden warmth against the sensitive skin behind his ears jolted him out of his trance, and he looked up to meet Kisame’s eyes as large fingers brushed lightly against Itachi’s scalp in retreat. The familiar weight of the cannula tubes slid into place around his ears once again.

“There you go,” Kisame said with a smile. “Everything’s back in place.”

For a single, perfect second, Itachi basked in Kisame’s attention. The entire situation was still embarrassing, of course, but it felt far away. Kisame was here right now, close enough to feel the warmth radiating out from his muscled arms, and Itachi wanted so badly to get jsut a little bit closer-

“Itachi.”

The moment shattered.

Itachi regretfully turned away from Kisame to meet his mother’s chastisement. 

She offered him an unimpressed arched eyebrow.

“Do I have to explain to you why your actions were improper?”

“No Mother. I understand my mistake.”

“If you’re using the word ‘mistake,’ singular, and not the plural, then clearly you don’t.” She eyed his crinkled hospital gown, which had gained some dirt spots during his fight with the driver, whose name was apparently Zabuza, with a polite sort of disgust. “We will be discussing them all at length later.”

Without waiting for a reply, she offered a nod of her head to Zabuza. 

“Please accept my apology on my son’s behalf. He is a good boy, despite his unfortunate rudeness today. But even so, there is no excuse for such uncivilized behavior.”

Zabuza, for his part, looked more uncomfortable with her apology than he had been grumbling at his sniggering friends. His lips opened, twisted, then pressed together again as he visibly warred with himself over whether it was worth it to offer a  _ don’t worry about it _ or an  _ it’s alright _ in order to make the situation stop. In the end he settled on a nod at Sasuke. 

“Kid’s alright?”

Sasuke, who had been gazing up at Itachi from behind Mikoto with a sort of annoyed hero-worship, nodded vigorously. Itachi gave him a quick once-over. Sure enough, he wasn't even bruised. Though there was a red spot on one knee where he'd fallen after Zabuza's truck bumped him...

“Why don’t you go get in the car while I walk your brother back to his room, Sasuke,” Mikoto said. “I’d like to make sure there are no further  _ issues  _ today.” 

Itachi steeled himself for an extremely disappointed lecture whispered fiercely enough for him to hear but low enough to go unheard by the nurses. 

“And Mr. Zabuza, if in the future you could take a little more care when driving around pedestrians, I believe everyone would benefit.”

Perhaps only a mildly disappointed lecture, then. The guy  _ had _ hit Sasuke with his car, after all. 

* * *

When Sasuke came to see him the next day, the video had already gone viral. 

Thankfully there were no names attached and the hospital wasn’t in the background, but Itachi was still fairly recognizable, especially at the 1:54 mark, where Mangetsu had shakily zoomed in on Itachi’s snarling face. 

“Everyone at school thought it was super cool,” Sasuke insisted with stars in his eyes. “Suigetsu said his brother said you  _ pulled him out of the truck while it was in gear _ and that’s why you can see Haku in the background trying to get from the passenger seat to the driver’s seat. He was trying to set the parking brake.”

Itachi winced. 

“I admit that I could have handled yesterday better.”

“What are you talking about?” Sasuke asked. “That was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen you do!”

“It was ill-conceived, ill-thought-out, unnecessary, violent, and endangered other people.”

“But it was  _ cool. _ ”

“Sasuke-”

“The pipsqueak is right, you were awesome,” the woman in the next bed over chimed in. “That poor bastard didn’t know what hit him. Can’t believe I slept through the whole thing. Stupid meds. If I’d known my teammates were going to be having fun without me, I’d have told the nurse to hold off a bit.”

Itachi sighed. 

“I don’t believe that violence is the best method for settling disputes. That I jumped straight to the most extreme method of making my point understood speaks poorly of me.”

The woman, whose name he had learned since yesterday was Ameyuri Ringo, dismissed this pronouncement out of hand. 

“Don’t worry about it, Zabuza had it coming. He always chews us out if we go too hard on Haku and make him pull a muscle or something.”

Itachi failed to see how this meant Zabuza ‘had it coming.’ 

At least Sasuke was no longer attempting to grill her about her taser swords. As soon as she’d confirmed the rumor about how she’d ended up here, Sasuke had bombarded her with questions that she was unfortunately happy to answer. 

Thankfully, he’s saved from having to answer by the sudden appearance of a visitor. 

“Oh, hey Kisame! Did you bring my physics stuff?”

Itachi’s heart did a little summersault in his chest. That moment yesterday when the fencer’s fingers had brushed his hair and skimmed against his skin as he put Itachi’s cannula back in place had been playing on repeat in his head all day long. He’d never been simultaneously so quickly and intensely attracted to someone and so embarrassed to be seen by them. 

“Hey Ameyuri. Here you go- it’s all due next Friday.”

Kisame handed her a stack of what must have been homework. 

“What are you still doing here anyway? I didn’t expect to find you in  _ this _ ward.”

Ameyuri rolled her eyes.

“Some tests came back weird or something and they won’t let me leave until they figure out why. It’s not all bad though- look who I got for a suite mate!”

Kisame turned and their eyes met. Instantly the burning attraction that Itachi had felt yesterday in the parking lot was roaring back to life. 

“Hello again, Itachi,” Kisame said. He smiled, and Itachi’s felt his heart rate ramp up a few beats per minute. “How serendipitous that I’d find you without having to look. I was very impressed by your creativity yesterday, and was wondering if you would like to learn some proper fencing once you’re discharged.”

“Yes please,” Itachi said before he’d even finished processing the words. “I get discharged this evening. When are you free?”


End file.
